# How to transcribe a Zoom meeting from its recording

Find the recording Zoom saved, pick the audio-only M4A file, and turn the meeting into a transcript with speaker turns, ready for minutes and follow-up actions.

Published 2026-11-06. Paxa Labs.

A recorded meeting is rarely watched again. Nobody wants to sit through an hour to find the one decision they missed. A transcript turns that hour into text you can search, and the minutes can be drafted straight from it.

Zoom saves a recording to your computer or, on paid plans, to its cloud. Either way you end up with a file, and the file is what gets transcribed. The steps apply to meetings you recorded yourself and recordings the host has shared with you.

## Where does Zoom save the recording?

That depends on where you recorded. [Zoom's guide to recording](https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0059856) says computer recording works on every Zoom account and saves the files to your own disk. Cloud recording is for the paid Pro, Business, Education, and Enterprise plans.

| Recorded to | Where to find it |
| --- | --- |
| Your computer | A Zoom folder inside Documents, by default. In the Zoom desktop app, open Settings, then the Recording tab, and click Open beside Storage location. |
| Zoom's cloud | The Recordings tab of the Zoom web portal, where the files can be viewed, shared, and downloaded. |

[Zoom's page on computer recordings](https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0063423) gives the exact folder for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

## Which recording file should you upload?

Zoom saves a meeting as an MP4 video and can save its sound alone as an M4A file. [Zoom's list of recording formats](https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0064394) says the audio-only file is named audio followed by a number. Upload that M4A. The Transcribe tool reads audio, and the M4A is much smaller than the video.

For cloud recordings, turn on Record audio-only files in [Zoom's cloud recording settings](https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0064676) before the meeting starts. If a folder holds only the MP4, open it in a video editor and export the sound as M4A or MP3.

## How do you transcribe the meeting, step by step?

1. Upload the M4A: Open [the Transcribe tool](https://paxalabs.com/app/transcribe) and drop in the audio file. The cost appears before you start.
2. Turn on Speakers: The transcript comes back as numbered turns, one number per voice. Nobody is identified by name, and you match the numbers to the attendees once.
3. Put the attendees in the vocabulary: List every attendee, the client, the product, and the project names, up to 50 terms. They come back spelled the way you wrote them.
4. Choose Written and Clean: Written gives digits for budgets and dates. Clean drops the fillers and false starts that minutes have no use for.
5. Transcribe and copy: Run it, read the result beside the audio, and copy the text into your notes.

> Paxa STT Lite is a research preview. Its transcripts and its options may change between releases.

## How do you turn the transcript into minutes?

Read the transcript once and replace each speaker number with a name. Then pull out three things, in this order.

- Decisions, each in one sentence.
- Actions, each with an owner and a due date.
- Open questions, with the person expected to answer each one.

A language model can draft the summary from the transcript. Check the draft against the transcript, because a summary can record a decision nobody made. [The meetings page](https://paxalabs.com/use-cases/meetings) shows the routine for a team that records every week.

## What should you check before you send the minutes?

- Names of people, clients, and products.
- Every figure, including budgets, dates, and percentages.
- Who said what, after you have put names to the speaker numbers.
- Negations. One dropped word turns a refusal into an agreement.
- Any stretch where people talked over each other.

## Should you tell people the meeting is recorded?

Yes. Tell everyone at the start that the meeting is being recorded and that a service will transcribe it, and follow your company's rules for recordings. Laws on recording differ from place to place, and [the interview guide](https://paxalabs.com/guides/how-to-transcribe-an-interview) covers consent in more detail.

Before you upload anything confidential, read how the service handles what you send. Ours is set out in [the Privacy Policy](https://paxalabs.com/privacy) and [the Terms](https://paxalabs.com/terms).

## What does it cost to transcribe a Zoom meeting?

Transcription is priced by the length of the recording. Paxa STT Lite costs 8.33 credits per minute of audio. An hour is 500 credits, or $0.50.

| Meeting | Length | Credits | Cost |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Weekly check-in | 30 minutes | 250 | $0.25 |
| Project meeting | 60 minutes | 500 | $0.50 |
| Workshop | 90 minutes | 750 | $0.75 |

A new account's 100 free credits cover about 12 minutes of audio, with no card. They are for personal use and evaluation. Buy any plan or credit pack, and the account's transcripts are yours to use commercially, including those made before the purchase.

## Can you transcribe a Zoom meeting while it happens?

The Transcribe tool's Transcribe live mode streams your own microphone and writes each turn as you pause, at 12.5 credits per minute of audio received. Capturing a whole Zoom call live takes an app built on [realtime transcription](https://paxalabs.com/realtime-speech-to-text). [Realtime vs recorded transcription](https://paxalabs.com/guides/realtime-vs-recorded-transcription) sets the two side by side.

## What should you read or try next?

- Upload a meeting recording to [the Transcribe tool](https://paxalabs.com/app/transcribe) with the free credits.
- See how a team turns weekly recordings into minutes on [the meetings page](https://paxalabs.com/use-cases/meetings).
- Read [how to transcribe audio to text](https://paxalabs.com/guides/how-to-transcribe-audio-to-text) for recording habits that help any meeting.
- Compare transcription services on [the speech to text API comparison](https://paxalabs.com/compare/speech-to-text-apis).

## Common questions

### Can I transcribe a Zoom meeting I did not host?

You need the recording file and the host's permission. Ask the host to share the recording, and use the transcript only for the purpose they agreed to.

### Does it work for Google Meet and Microsoft Teams recordings?

Yes. Any meeting works once its sound is an audio file such as M4A or MP3. Export the audio from a video recording before you upload it.

### How long can the recording be?

One file can run up to 120 minutes and 95 MB. Split a longer recording at a break and transcribe each part.

### Which languages does it transcribe?

Transcription is multilingual, and Auto detects the language for you. A meeting that moves between languages keeps each word in the script it was spoken in.